Primocane Fruiting Blackberries

After a long wait, the first blackberry cultivars that produce fruit in the fall are available for spring planting! Like Heritage raspberry, Prime-Jim and Prime-Jan blackberry plants can produce fruit in late July until frost. Bare-root plants can be planted in late March through early April. Plants are allowed to grow the first growing season and will bear a few fruit. The following spring, the overwintered canes are mowed off so that the newly emerging canes will produce a fall crop of berries. Prime-Jan has larger fruit size than Prime-Jim, but Prime Jim produces a larger overall crop. While it is terrific to have fall-bearing blackberries that are easy to prune, these plants are not without faults. The canes are thorny, which makes harvesting more time-consuming. Also, these plants tend have a prostrate growth-habit the first year, which makes weed control more difficult. And finally, while they do produce a fall crop, the berry size is much smaller than the summer-fruiting types such as Kiowa, Shawnee, Apache, and Arapaho. However, these cultivars are only the first releases from the University of Arkansas fruit breeding program, with undoubtedly improved fall-bearing blackberry cultivars on the way!

Michele Warmund
Ag Ext.-Plant Sciences
573-882-9632